


sehnsucht

by 5pips



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, F/M, M/M, Pining, Post Reichenbach, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension, romanticism of unromantic things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 13:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5pips/pseuds/5pips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In all pasts and presents and futures and other lives: Sherlock loves John, even when John does not love him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sehnsucht

**Author's Note:**

> For [Amber](http://sassiarty.tumblr.com/), because I adore you so.
> 
> Love, love and love to thisprettywren and HiddenLacuna for betaing and holding my hand through this. Thank you to everyone who encouraged me while writing. There wouldn't be a fic here without you all!

The jellyfish has no heart of its own. Only a barren cavity of cartilage and bundles of scattered nerves.  
  
Nonetheless, founded on some odd sadistic poetic justice (perhaps the Fates having a laugh), artificial jellyfish can be made from others’ hearts. Rat heart cells, silicone and synthetic bonds. Splintered together to create a miniature Frankenstein’s monster that only a mother could adore.

**

In another life: John’s eyelashes flutter against his cheek, brushing invisible feathered patterns against his skin. He could be carved from alabaster, for the way John melts against him; warmth and ice, human and marble.  
  
In that other life, he cradles John’s jaw in his palm, caresses the nape of his neck: mindful of the fifteen different ways he could strangle him in this position. Possibly even sixteen, depending on the positioning of John’s inferior thyroid artery.  
  
The intimacy shivers up his bare forearms, snakes beneath his skin like vines, tinged with the smell of John’s aftershave. Corkscrews itself into his pores, sears its mark in the henna of memory-fantasy.  
  
It’s not real, he knows.

**

He takes the five o’clock bus to Knightsbridge, and occupies himself with watching the passengers next to him rather than thinking about John’s expression (and his reaction) when Sherlock shows up on his doorstep. Will he punch him? Shout obscenities? Shut the door and never look back? Break down in tears? God, he hopes not. Sherlock can’t and doesn’t work well with crying people. Maybe John will clutch the doorframe and pull Sherlock into his arms, and maybe secretly, Sherlock will enjoy it (he dreams about it. John’s arms, around him.).  
  
The area of Knightsbridge he’s heading to is a decently expensive neighbourhood, just far enough from the heart of the city to be peaceful, but not nearly so far as to be out of the city proper. Why an adrenaline addict like John would choose such an utterly dull place, especially one swarming with CCTV cameras and guards, Sherlock can’t imagine.  
  
Though after three years, there is nothing about John he can be certain of, he reminds himself. Mycroft had said as much when Sherlock burst into his office, coat askew, and demanded John’s address, _no questions asked_. “Things won’t be the same,” Mycroft had warned. Sherlock had merely hissed, “ _Obvious_ ” in reply, and spun on his heel, purposefully kicking up the velvet carpet on his way out.  
  
Because he knows. He knows that he would be lucky for them to be even a shadow of the friends they once were.  Anything more would be the realization of a pipe dream and pointedly out of the question; if John had not fallen for Sherlock before he leapt off St Bart’s rooftop three years ago, John will hardly be more likely to fall for him now, after. After Sherlock has taken him aside and explained in no uncertain terms what he has done. What he has had to do. He’ll use deep, secretive whispers (never mind that this is all in the police report) and perhaps, if he does it right, John will pity him enough not to run too far away. And Sherlock will take his pity, because he does not know what he would do without John.

**

He doesn’t know when it began. The realization that he could love. Because when one is reliably (and repeatedly) informed of something, it becomes harder and harder to doubt.  
  
But he feels himself slipping, back to nine years ago, when they pulled him out of the gutter. High as a kite and irises blown wide. Tearing himself apart.  
  
He’s just internalized the destruction, that’s all. Found a new drug. And now, without it—withdrawal sucking at his veins—it’s turning his lungs inside out.  
  
God, he wishes he could shoot up. He wishes.

**

In his mind’s eye, John sits in the armchair Sherlock has privately designated ‘John’s chair’. He silently lifts his shirt up and lets Sherlock take his time, silently categorizing every little scar, every nick and bruise. This one is from the case with the stickynotes in Sussex, this one the German bandits: the knife scar across his back, the time he almost fell into the Thames. The one near his bellybutton, the time he did.  
  
In his mind’s eye, Sherlock comes to know John’s body as well as his own. He doesn’t need to look again after the first time; it’s embedded in his mind, the jagged lines as intimate as the roads of London.  
  
In his mind’s eye, there is sunlight slanting into Baker Street. John sits on the sofa, and Sherlock kneels before him, unwavering. The light warms Sherlock’s hair to brown, it scatters photons across the carpet in slanted rectangles. It slashes lazy golden stripes across John’s nose and cheeks. He lifts his head and John’s fingers touch the side of his face, and he knows.  
  
He _knows_.  
  
In his mind’s eye, Sherlock chases criminals across London, and John follows without a question. John bandages him up, and reminds him to eat, and picks up the shopping. John doesn’t ask for _thank you_ s, and Sherlock doesn’t have to give any.  
  
In his mind’s eye, love is a possibility just at the edge of his fingertips.

**

Time (and people) don’t stop to wait for a return not even promised, not for three years, and not for sixteen bullets.

**

“Hello, may I help you?”  
  
Sherlock has John’s face memorized, each expression meticulously categorized. (He knows each shift in muscle, each intimate layer of skin, the way his jaw twitches when he is frustrated. He knows his normal temperature, the way his nose reddens when it’s chilly, the signals that he is about to sneeze or yawn. He has each element pinned down, examined and taken apart: nothing left uncovered. Perfectly predictable.)  
  
Sherlock blinks, because John’s unrecognizing expression has to be a joke, it has to be. A revenge prank? John couldn’t have known he was coming. (He wouldn’t be so cruel.)  
  
He searches for a bluff to call, but there is none. He reads truth, in the unassuming smile, easygoing stance, the metal cane. And he reads ‘human scenery’ in the way John’s gaze slides past him as if he’s never seen him before in his life.

**

The goldfish can remember up to three months; the slug, one month; the pigeon, several years.

**

The honeybee can remember the scent of a flower for its entire lifetime.

**

Sherlock tells him _oh_ — _pardon_ — _I was looking for someone else_ , and if John were a cleverer person, it would’ve confused him; no one had lived there before him. Sherlock sees it in the layering of the grass, the immaculate concrete, the never-replaced curtains in the window on his right, the still-straight water gutter on his left. He is the first occupant of the house. But he isn’t alone.  
  
Even given such a miniscule opening into John’s (new) life, Sherlock can’t help himself from noticing. It’s overwhelming what one can see, given a bare minute of time. Nested just within the doorway: a shadowed shoe rack containing a woman’s slippers and high heels, well worn. They form a comfortable duo next to John’s own Loake boots. Slight scuff marks and faint tracks of dried dirt from where they have been placed previously—innumerable times. Not merely a visitor, then. Two sets of umbrellas lying by the floor mat inside—slightly damp. Had been used recently, both of them. Two sets of coats, hidden behind a half-closed walk-in closet door. Spotless from dust, not bereft of use. A woman’s and a man’s.  
  
Sherlock doesn’t let that sink in, meld itself into the dark crevices behind his ears. He stands, instead. Drowns. Somehow, lifts his feet, waves a cheery goodbye and steps faux-lightly down the blinding white paved walkway to the road.  
  
He watches the door shut firmly against him, the knocker ricocheting twice against the wood. Overhears the hushed murmur of questioning voices—one higher, answered by John’s own. A tug and pull, mix of melody and harmony. No talking over the other—intimate, easy. He feels like a voyeur; it dirties his white shirt and covers his mouth like a sweat-soaked hand.  
  
He leaves before he hears any more, slipping away in the soft way that wounded animals do.

**

For all his inflated vocabulary, the pressure on the left side of his ribcage refuses to be named. It sinks, it feels so heavy, like the burden of Atlas nested atop his bones.

**

“You’ve got questions.” A statement. Sherlock knows it isn’t an apology. The muted tap and weighted thud of the umbrella on the plush carpet behind him says that despite the unforgiving tone, his brother is equally tense. He never could rid himself of that tell.  
  
Sherlock is uncertain of what he might be revealing himself .  
  
He lets the words hang in the air, condensing with each second—pregnant clouds draped above a complacent, smoothed-over grey horizon. He lets them amble lethargically in the space between them, filling the lull with the footprints of everything they know isn’t being said, won’t be said. He lets them swell until they are bursting at the seams; an obscene display, exploiting the silence. He lets them bloat until they can hold no more.  
  
“Obviously. How and why?” His fingers grip the base of his violin tighter, loitering languidly by the floor. He can wear feigned disinterest like a second skin, sticking and peeling in veneer-thin layers.  
  
Still, the subtle, traitorous crackle in his voice at the end of ‘why’ gives him away, without fail.  
  
“There was nothing to be done. It was just as said—an accident.”  
  
A pause. Sherlock curls his toes against the faux-velvet, the only sign he has heard. He exhales, slowly, turning his head to stare irritably at the off-white ceiling; dangles his arm carelessly off the sofa. He bores holes into the ceiling, imagining them to be the soles of a woman’s high heels, the rise of her voice bouncing against the cavern inside his head, a steady beat, yoyo-ing with the tremble of high vibrato. Ruthless, pervading.  
  
“Retrograde amnesia.The original diagnosis was perfectly sound, and within reason, that couldn’t be faulted; you know, of course, that he had had no bad history with strong barbiturates. I have ensured that the responsible physician was taken care of. An... unfortunate _vis major_ , for both parties.”  
  
No need for a seventeenth bullet, then. (He considers it, regardless.) (John had always hated liquid medicine. Said it tasted like drinking plastic death. (“And you say _I_ am overdramatic.” “You are, you git.”))  
  
He says nothing, lets the static noise and hum of his laptop (thrown offhandedly: coffeetable) speak for him, lets them stretch the mute air into tangible strings of pale incandescence, lets them thin into silk-slender cords. He searches Mycroft through those strings, peers at him through the sinews and forbidding stratosphere, sees all that isn’t, can’t be said.  
  
He keeps his eyes wide open, drills the plaster wall with the cadence of long-memorized chemical nomenclature: adamantine, borneol, cadaverine, dodecahedrane, peroxidise, carboxylase, oxygenase, bisphosphate. Bombards the windows with familiar tongued syllables, alpha particles on gold foil.  
  
“The original NHS form noted he’d been having trouble sleeping. Emphasized it wasn’t trauma-related. Just trouble getting to sleep.”  
  
He wants to ask about _her_ , about the woman. Instead—“How long?”  
  
“Two years.”  
  
He twitches the fingers gripping his violin, stroking the strings faintly; relaxes his hold, lets the lukewarm wood slip against the healing callouses on his fingerpads.  
  
The clock ticks. Nothing seems to move, the ragged breathing of the flat’s inhabitants striking two irregular metronomes, forever out of touch with the other: an irreversible syncopation of too-soon give-take, off-balance push-pull. Locked to the meters of their own snare drums; seeing the other, but unable to approach, two planets passing in orbit.  
  
A heavy sigh, impatient and fraught with expectation. Sherlock does not respond, his faint breaths ghosting the curls across his forehead.  
  
The clock is still ticking. He wishes it would stop.  
  
Leather-shod feet shuffle towards the door; he does not make to move, continues gazing pointedly at the bullet-holes in the wall. He keeps his eyes wide open, as the sound of tires recedes into the distance.  
  
He keeps his eyes wide open, until he can be certain they will not give him away.

**

He is angry. He is angry because it is John who has left him here, and it is John’s fault his chest echoes as hollow skeletons’ do.  
  
He shoots six more holes in the wall, obliterating the smiley face already there because _that’ll teach it_.

**

> _Think very carefully. I’ll not be cleaning up any messes. –MH_

**

Three years and sixteen bullets (seventeen hearts).  
  
Was it worth it?

**

He is angry because he is afraid of what he will be once the rage falls away, because he wants to hate John but finds himself lacking truth when he says it to the man in the mirror.  
  
Frightened of what he will be alone with when the protective fog of resentment vaporizes because he can’t hate John, not forever.

**

The worst comes when they meet on the street. Though really, collide is the better word for it. John gasps when he falls, and it’s the loveliest sound Sherlock has heard in months.  
  
The first thing Sherlock’s eyes go to are his fingers. No ring. The rush of relief stings him.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he manages to gasp out, helping John onto his feet. He keeps his face turned away underneath his black hoodie, having taken to disguises to avoid the few members of the press that still remember him (he tells himself this is the only reason). The place where his hand touches John’s arm: burns. It sears like hot iron, like boiled mercury poured over his thumbpads, but he cannot pull away. He knows he will remember the texture beneath his fingers, he knows it’ll haunt his idle thoughts. The sensation of moving skin obscured under the thick cover of polymer, of knowing John’s _alive_ and _this is as close as he will get_.  
  
“S’alright,” John says, but Sherlock hardly notices. He reads domesticity in the ironed press of his clothes, the Tesco bags of milk and meat he is carrying (enough for two), the spot behind his ear (no shaving cream residue), the lack of eyebags (comfortable).  
  
His hands are frozen into icicles, human meat and blood and bone cast in steel: he wills himself to move, stop staring (“We can’t _both_ stare.”) but he is bound by the iron case of his skin. He reads _in touch with sister_ in the lines on his forehead, _steady job_ in his jacket (a new line, only reached the shops last month), _electrical toothbrush_ (can afford: financially secure) in the press of his lips.  
  
He reads _happiness_ and _doesn’t need me_ in the open book that is John Watson.  
  
God, his lips. Inches away, he could just kiss him, move in and close his eyes. If only—  
  
John’s questioning shift in his hands snaps him to awareness. He nods once, not sure how he manages to invoke enough voice to grunt “goodbye”, and force himself to walk away, slowly, calmly, with a poise he does not feel. He can sense John’s gaze on him until he turns the corner (tells himself John would stare after him that long, that it isn’t wishful thinking.).  
  
And then—he lets himself run.  
  
He goes down the Thames, to a little past Brentford. People stare (of course they do; that’s what people do) but he pays them no heed. The familiar pound of his feet drives away the chant in his head, that he cannot pretend that this is not how it all ends, that this is all he is left with. The sensation of unyielding stone is all he has to register, replacing the persistent buzzing with an eclipse of thankful nothingness.  
  
He doesn’t know what he’s running from or where he’s going. He hasn’t run so far all at once since University (since Victor).  
  
When he returns to Baker Street, it’s eleven in the evening and no one’s around. For that, he is thankful.

**

The smell of John’s shampoo stays with him for weeks.  
  
His startled half-cry: months. Sherlock twists the sound into wicked fantasies of pinning John up by his hands, of thrusting his tongue into his mouth, of rutting lewdly against his smaller hip, of letting the coarse wool of a grey jumper chafe the inside of his thighs.  
  
Of owning him.

**

He is left with a vast array of soiled coats, an old cane underneath the sofa, and more than enough memories to last a lifetime. The valley of empty scorn dissolves in his stomach, leaving behind the salts of its existence in the lakebed, raw and open to the sky. He feels exposed, because it’s never been so transparent, and vacant anger is a better shield than none at all. And now he does not even have _that._

**

The next time, he is an elderly lady selling papers outside the cafe John frequents.  
  
He reads love in the engagement band on his finger.  
  
Sherlock leaves abruptly, abandoning the stack on a nearby table. He hobbles away, to stay in character, but the sound of John’s laughter (to the barista, not him, he reminds himself) crushes itself into the corner of his mind that won’t go away.  
  
He wants to run.

**

The French angelfish mates for life.

**

He thinks about calling (never mind that he doesn’t know John’s new number), thinks about what they would be doing when he interrupted. Would they be having sex? Would he have her legs bent up over his shoulders, pulsing deep within her, and her soft arms wound tightly around his neck? Would she be touching his scar? Placing her lips to it, kiss-close? (He grits his teeth.) Would his left hand be trembling as he gripped her shoulders? Maybe he’d be whispering sweet nothings into her hair, their warm cocoon the only home he knows. (Bites inside his cheek.) Maybe she would tangle her fingers with his, their gold bands clicking together, smile against his chapped lips, sing to him _I love you_. And he’d whisper to her in return.  
  
Sherlock would call, and John wouldn’t answer. He’d push against her lips, closing his eyes against the insistent ring of the phone. He’d tell her _it can wait_ , and never remember to call back.  
  
In another life:  John would be here, instead. Sherlock would be devouring him. Sucking his tongue into his mouth, drawing clean blood like razors. He would mark him, leave irretrievable scars—bite into the soft underside of his neck, where his collar didn’t reach—flaunt his ownership to the world. Sarah would see. His coworkers would see. _She_ would see, Mycroft would see, everyone would see. And they would know. He would kill John, slowly, and remake him in his image, the world narrowing to the knife and the delicate whetstone of his collarbones. He would wrap him in iron and chainmail, and never let him leave. He would chant, 'John, John, _John'_ , and in that other life, John would never go. He would lie compliant and let Sherlock burn him, mouth open and gasping, a jagged red gash at the forefront of his vision. Panting.  
  
It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair.

**

Because he isn’t fool enough to deny it. That he wants this, an intangible _something_ he can hardly even name.  
  
But he cannot accept that this reality is all he has, will ever have. The longing gnaws into his bones, sucks out the marrow, leaves him empty-handed with hollowed shells.

**

He hasn’t tried to replace John’s section of the bookshelf. He tells himself the dog-eared, illegibly-annotated textbooks are useful. Could be useful. Someday.

**

Somewhere a long time ago: Sherlock doesn’t talk. He takes one look at the living room, and walks straight into it. He seats himself in the plush armchair next to the sofa, and doesn’t say a word, settling himself comfortably to the side. He opens his laptop and stares pointedly at the screen as it comes to life with a faint whirring sound, mindful of the scene unfolding before him.  
  
“I should go—“  
  
“No, Josephine, it’s fine—stay—” A rustle of coats, and John’s reluctant protests come from somewhere behind him. The stairwell, then.  
  
“I’ll call you.”  
  
The distant slam of doors, and Sherlock is vengeful, glad that John’s footsteps sound as vicious as the ugly coiling sensation in his chest. John paces in front of him with military precision, but Sherlock ignores him, continues typing replies to potential clients.  
  
“You couldn’t just leave the room?” His exhale is delivered as a slap and a punch all at once, packed with controlled force.  
  
Sherlock twitches his index finger, swapping to another program. It throws like a kick in his gut, but he’ll be damned before he lets it show. He’ll turn to stone before he lets it show.  
  
“It’s just.. it’s the fourth time this week, you know. Look, I..” John pauses, sitting down heavily in the armchair across. “Could we set up a schedule? Let me know when you won’t be home?”  
  
Sherlock does not even bother to grace that with an incredulous look, merely taps away without so much as a twitch. John’s tired sigh tells him that he’s trying not to be angry, mentally chalking it up to another incidence of ‘ _Sherlock doesn’t understand human behaviour_ ’—and somehow, that hurts almost as much.  
  
“I won’t get in the way,” he says, finally. He does not look up, even when he can feel John’s disbelieving gaze on him, visceral.  
  
“Look, I,” John rubs his hand over his eyes, “I get that _sentiment_ isn’t something you do. Or probably even understand. But it’s something the rest of us do.”  
  
 _But I do_ , Sherlock wants to blurt out, catching himself just before he lets the confession slip. _I do, I do, I do_. He wants to plunge himself beneath the continental shelf, wedge himself beneath the subduction zones and never come out, he wants hundreds and thousands of pounds of earth to crush him without mercy so he has no space to remember what he is to John and, more importantly, what he isn’t. So that all that is left of him—dust particles and antimatter—will never be found and held up to ridicule for how wholeheartedly he has reworked his entire universe around John Watson, when John Watson clearly has not.  
  
“I just want some, you know, time to myself.”  
  
“On the contrary, I understand perfectly.” He still does not glance up, not even when John surrenders with a defeated sigh and walks away.

**

In another far away: John pushes against Sherlock’s back, tongue rasping heady desperation into an equally-desperate ear. Leaves his secrets handwritten in the crook of Sherlock’s neck and his blood vessels traipsed across his shoulders, and Sherlock never washes the markings away, baring the tattoos like trophies for all the world to see.

**

He thinks of contacting John, of revealing all he has forgotten. Of sitting with him in his living room, of acting pleasantly surprised when his fiancée appears with biscuits and tea, of recounting the tales of all the adventures they had together (of beating corpses and heads in the fridge and putting up with Anderson). Of saying ‘yes, really’ when John asks him, ‘ _really_?’ It lures him, tempts him by dancing right at his grasp, mirage to the desert-stranded traveler.  
  
He thinks—no, he knows—John would come to believe, as most people did (himself included), that he was mad to put up with Sherlock. Would be, to do so again.  
  
And that’s precisely the problem: even if he laid out their past in detail (so clear he could see the spots of dither), it would not change a thing. Non-negotiable, that’s what it was, their separation: a fixed point in time. Sherlock would tell John about the lady in pink, and John would stare back, agape with horror. And it would bore a hole in his chest, smoke rising from the charred flesh, and he would excuse himself out of the house and out of John’s life when John calls him a liar because it is all so unbelievable.  
  
No, this is better, because the things said aloud scar more vividly than the things unknown and unsaid.

**

Lestrade doesn’t ask about John, and Sherlock doesn’t offer. The truth floats between them, crowding the oxygen out of the room, the shared knowledge reluctant like that of an ex-lover’s dirty secret. Too afraid to broach the subject, yet unwilling to pretend it’s all fine: limbo. The metaphorical elephant in the room. The one time he raises his eyes and hesitates as if to speak, Sherlock silences him with a jagged glare. It’s the first time he’s been to a crime scene since returning, and the taint of old ghosts fills his nose, suffocates his senses.  
  
It’s everywhere. Buried in the thick fibres of his overcoat, outlined on his lips. Drilled into his very molecules. He knows the brand will never leave, even if he scrubs himself raw, lines of radiation-red trailing down his skinny arms in twisted rivulets.  
  
He makes his voice twice as loud, twice as deep, tries to fill the gap; talks twice as quickly, wraps it up in half the time. Stretches his coat large enough for two, two persons, doesn’t skip a beat (there are no ‘ _fantastics_ ’ to wait for), injects a sneering confidence he doesn’t feel up to. Makes his presence powerful enough to fill the abandoned space on its own. Ignores Lestrade’s wide-eyed concern, raises his voice when he makes to interrupt. Imbues twice the usual bite into his insults (observations, really; “ _you wouldn’t have realized it if it’d been dangled right in front of your face—oh wait._ ”), ups his ante to three times the theatrics.  
  
He solves the case in just under ten minutes, swooping out the doorway in a flurry of _too easy_ , _if paintbrush made of boar bristle: arrest wife_ , and _text me when you have a_ real _case_ before they can stop him.  
  
The taxi ride back to Baker Street is spent in silence, because he doesn’t need anyone’s pity.  
  
(that was.. _amazing_.  
you really think so?)

**

His next client hints heavily at wanting a new flatmate, and instantly, Sherlock knows this is Mycroft’s doing. He throws the man out of the flat most unceremoniously, tossing his bags out the side window onto Mrs Hudson’s bins. The crash is spectacular—gratifying, really. The case had been rudimentary, a frankly transparent excuse. He knows Mycroft could’ve done much better if he’d actually tried; no, he’d wanted his intent to be clear.

> _Piss off. –SH_

**

He waits for the hollow sound of footsteps up the landing.  
  
Waits and waits. Pretends he’s bored, eager for a new case. Stretches out lavishly on the sofa, buries himself in textbooks on cattle skeletons, orders Chinese takeout. Stores heads in the fridge however and whenever he pleases, mutes the crap telly and skips to the end of novels by chapter three. Staples fingers to the wall, bleaches pig veins and smokes out a canary’s stomach.  
  
But mostly, he waits.

**

The lethal _Cubozoan_ jellyfish _Chironex fleckeri_ is nearly transparent and impossible to see until it is far, far too late.

**

He plays the violin at four in the morning, because maybe _this time_ , John will come charging out of his room and demand that he shut up for the love of all that is holy.

**

In a universe far away, in a place he doesn’t name: Sherlock backs John against the kitchen counter, slides his palms across the lapels of his best suit. He bends his neck kiss-close, and with John set aglow in the dim light, he can see every detail. The fine hairs on John’s arms rise, dress-shirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and Sherlock flattens them roughly with his fingers, electrified that he can. He licks his way across John’s neck, leaves crisscrosses of _mine, mine, mine_. It’s childish, the possessiveness: he wants to slice into John’s skin, reroute his cells to answer to Sherlock’s signal molecules only, so that the only one he’d respond to—the only one who could ever have this—would be him.  
  
In this far away: it’s the eve of John’s wedding, and John doesn’t go. The night doesn’t end and they spend the rest of their lives in the millisecond before the clock strikes midnight, a forever-asymptote, alit and surrounded by all the things they’ve confessed and done. Sherlock fixes him with a quicksilver stare, eyes almost frighteningly hard, and John only steps closer, tangles shorter fingers snug against his scalp. Sherlock isn’t light-years away, and John isn’t almost-married; John is endlessly careful in the way he bites the nape of Sherlock’s neck, and it makes his head hazy with pinpricks and words he keeps muzzled deep behind his voicebox.

**

In this far away, John knows Sherlock’s name, and whispers it like a prayer.

**

Later, as he’s standing by the remains of a triple homicide in Surrey, Lestrade shuffles up beside him and clears his throat roughly and Sherlock pretends he hasn’t heard anything, pointedly studying the frozen legs of the corpse before him.  
  
“It was the best choice to make, at the time.” Sherlock doesn’t move, continues fidgeting at the victim’s torn stockings.  
  
“We didn’t know you were coming back. God, he was such a wreck when you left, and...” The DI’s hand chases through his silver hair, and for a moment Sherlock is vindictively gleeful: misery does love company.  
  
“All of us. All of us were. Wrecks, I mean.” Sherlock shuts his eyes and recites the Greek alphabet.  
  
“And, God help us, it seemed the kinder thing to do. If we couldn’t forget, then at least he could.”  
  
Sherlock is silent another moment, then points at a smudged spot on the woman’s calf. “Mud—rain. She was in New Brighton before she died. Track the trains she took and you’ll find her killer.”  
  
He slips away soundlessly in the haze of neon police lights, veiled by the commotion of loud sirens, and hails a cab on the main road.

**

Even later, Lestrade sidles up to him, shifting from foot to foot. His voice is pitched low, as if asking. He hesitates, clearly weighing his words.  
  
“It wasn’t our choice to make, you know. To not tell him. His sister decided it—“  
  
Sherlock’s back tenses, his entire spine stiffening board-straight as if Lestrade had whipped him. “Shut up.”

**

He could shout it from the rooftops and it would not make a difference. The birds could feed on the raw carcasses of his words, pick them out of his hands as he scatters them to the winds, and it would not make a difference.

**

Sherlock snarls extra viciously the next time he sees Anderson, who only looks back at him with sympathetic eyes.

**

It could’ve been a comfort, the knowledge that he alone holds these memories.  
  
That he’s the only one on earth who remembers the way John smells after a hot shower, damp and soft with steam and sleepy eyes. Where he leaves his toothbrush in the bathroom, the way he sleeps curled on his left side, the way he clusters his possessions on the closest edge of his nightstand. The sharp burst of John’s voice when he yells Sherlock’s name, the intake of his breath when Sherlock does something clever (good or not good), that he loves those 80s thrillers that Sherlock hates, how long it takes him to get up in the morning. The smell of him that doesn’t come from product and aftershave and cheap shampoo. That there’s still something sacred left to what was between them, however feeble.  
  
That all he knows of John still belongs to him alone.  
  
Instead, he’s left with white noise thundering in his ears, and the unforgiving itch of _knowing_ he has to share them with _her_ , that they aren’t really his. That he isn’t the only one who has learned the curves of John’s toes and the way his footsteps sound when they pace down the hallway to his room, his favourite mug, the way he flicks the pages of the book he’s reading as he’s turning them.  
  
He jolts awake with gun-steady fingers in his hair and the echo of John’s voice chanting his name so singularly that it’s almost like he still has a chance.

**

Sherlock imagines knowing John well enough to write a “congratulations on your engagement” card and doesn’t send it, because _that’s what people do._

**

In a far away that should've happened: Sherlock sits by the kitchen table, head bowed against the dimmed lamplight. A wad of bloody tissue, the five o’clock ticketstub and the dull throb of his freshly-broken nose are his only companions, the former left forlorn on the marble countertop next to him. John enters and Sherlock hardly dares to look up, but he does because he's held himself back too much and too long. His cheeks are stained dark with tearstreaks, and his fists clench and unclench unconsciously, choking an unknown enemy. He stands before Sherlock and tilts his head and Sherlock drowns; the depths feel like an insomnia he couldn’t break through if he tried, meters and meters of clear black water pressed down above him, the play of sunlight on surface so far ahead.  
  
The sensation of lips on his own jolts him back to awareness, and he vaguely acknowledges the feeling of sinking. John pulls back and cups his head in his hands, as if studying the way the light glints off Sherlock's curls, pointedly avoiding his eyes. The tip of his tongue darts out to wet his lips, and Sherlock is lost.  
  
"I can’t—I won't—forgive you," John says quietly, voice mild and even, "if you leave me again. No discussion."  
  
Never, Sherlock doesn't say, keeps the promise locked within his jaws with forevers and other vows he doesn't dare and can’t make. Instead, he pulls John atop him, the heady possibility of John simply fleeing from his touch hovering like the thick scent of ozone. After three years, there isn't anything about John he can be certain of.  
  
Later in this far away, he realizes the frightful (dismal, really) mess that John has made of his shirt.  
  
And, perhaps—of him.

**

In another long ago: it is half-past ten when he finally stumbles out of his room, the effects of Irene’s tranquilizers subsiding into a slow, thudding ache and the haze of anaesthetics settling in its place.  
  
John is seated at the kitchen table, having made a small clearing amongst the clutter for his laptop. Sherlock goes to him, swift and automatic, falcon to handler. John looks up when he approaches, his eyes widening in alarm when Sherlock stumbles, standing and walking quickly to support him by the arm.  
  
“You’re not supposed to be up,” he chides, “it’ll be a few more hours before all the drugs wear off.”  
  
 _I know_ , Sherlock wants to say, but his mouth feels sluggish with sticky clay, so all he manages is a muffled _mmph_. John understands without words and his mouth twitches into a fond half-smile, as he steers Sherlock towards the sitting room. John understands him so well that it tears at Sherlock’s joints, stretches the ligaments until they snap in the abrupt way that humans do.  
  
 _Strong hands_ , he thinks, dazedly, _I wonder what it’d be like to die by them._ Strong hands, twisted around his neck and gripping with a commitment like none other, because there is no bond quite like that of the victim’s with their killer’s: a mutual scarring of psyche, as one shapes the other and neither escapes unscathed. Both committing their lives irretrievably to the other, with nothing the same in all futures and all visions of the past after. One is not, without the other, held witness in their most feral, visceral moment, locked in helpless, inescapable tango. A declaration of promise.  
  
It would disturb John, he is certain, if he knew Sherlock wanted this sort of incomparable intimacy. The sort that is incongruent with sweet candlelit dinners and goodnight kisses by the door; the sort that forms an irregular shape against perfect squares, that forces itself to the front of the crowd, that demands to be seen for its dissonance. The sort that wants him to write ownership on his arms so that no one else can, the sort that makes him want to collar John and hold him on a leash so he’ll never be further than a meter from Sherlock’s grasp.  
  
John’s phone buzzes demandingly somewhere close by, and he is shoved back to awareness: it is late in the evening, and he isn’t in danger (not Lestrade), it is a weekend (not clinic or Sarah). Not a Friday or weekend (not other companions). _Girlfriend_. The world shifts on its axis abruptly, the pieces floundering before his eyes, clicking into place when he realizes he has fallen sideways onto John’s shoulders. _Oh._  
  
John’s hands lower him to the sofa, and he covers Sherlock with an errant blanket, settling himself on the armrest. If Sherlock shuts his eyes hard enough, he can pretend the hands are lowering him for a different reason, with something that isn’t entirely kindly platonic care.  
  
“Try not to hurt yourself.” Sherlock merely grunts in response, because his mind is spinning too fast to process coherent words, swirling thick dough instead of clear water.  
  
No matter what he may say and no matter how he may laugh at crime scenes, John will not want to be a Confirmed Bachelor for the rest of his life. One day, he will up and leave, in the dull manner that most people do: quietly and without much fanfare. And Sherlock will be left with nothing, perhaps even less than he’d started with. Before John had come and ordered his world into neat rectangular boxes and created a crippled-army-doctor-sized niche for himself in Sherlock’s psyche, retina-specific lock and key. Made himself the keystone of Sherlock’s life: set Sherlock up to fall, for him to collapse in the way ruined buildings do. And he’ll feel the loss when the wrecking ball hits, acute as a missing limb, and flooded with longing for something he never even had.  
  
He misses John already, and John is not even gone yet.  
  
“Sleep.” John makes as if to leave ( _girlfriend_ ), and Sherlock grips him by the arm. If he doesn’t move now, he’ll never have another chance. He knows this even as he does not remember he’s _not his date_.  
  
“Sherlock?—“  
  
He wants to pull John down, smash his lips against his own, make him see what he is parading before his very eyes; _ladies and gentlemen, kids of all ages_ , _the centerpiece act_. He wants to play exhibitionist, shove back the sleeves of his shirt and flash all his crudely-stitched scars, he wants John to be horrified and he wants to shock him with harsh white light and the gruesome reality of his desires. He wants to force his eyes to watch, he wants to watch John freeze, spine tensing deliciously in the way Sherlock craves, he wants to watch John’s eyes dart between flight ( _not gay_ ) or fight ( _I know you. 100%._ ), and he wants John to choose to fight, when he says, plainly, _I love you_.  
  
Fight, for him. For them. Fight as though they’re his Queen and Country. Sherlock wonders if John would take a second bullet to the shoulder, just for him.  
  
John’s phone buzzes again, and Sherlock’s hold loosens in surprise, momentarily distracted. John carefully pushes him back to the sofa, and Sherlock reckons that he has never envied John’s brain more, able to chalk Sherlock’s actions up to nothing more than temporary disorientation.  
  
“Get some rest.”  
  
He turns to answer the text, and the moment is gone, as if it had never been (perhaps it hadn’t). And Sherlock is left with the certainty that people have when they leap into whirlpools headfirst, when they march into a hungry lions’ pens, and when they misstep on tightropes.  
  
He feels the seconds eroding steadily in the way sticks of TNT do, lit from both ends. Rests his head on John’s lap, dozes imagining the phantom of strong hands in his hair. Bargains with inevitability, pretends he’s sleeping just so John won’t move for fear of waking him, if it’ll shut out the timer’s ticking, even fleetingly.  
  
If it’ll keep John beside him for just a moment longer.

**

He loves him.  
  
Love, in the way that people do when they murder their spouse’s admirers, when they drive off cliffs in anguish, when they spend days locked within dark rooms writing lacklustre poetry. It’s—it’s utterly pedestrian, and he despises himself for it.  
  
But he would. He would kill, if it meant John would be just his again and even still _not a couple_ , and he would shut himself away if it meant John would have no one else.

**

This isn’t what was supposed to happen. Off-the-script, uncharted and unanticipated. They were supposed to grow old, and grow apart in the way platonic friends do, after their lives intersect for however brief an interlude. Saunter along their separate highways—and in a way, they are doing just that—the recollection of their acquaintance pushed to the back of their minds and lists of priorities, but never quite forgotten. This isn’t what was supposed to happen.  
  
But it is what happened, in the calm and matter-of-fact way that things happen. Sherlock is left wanting to dryclean himself of all the vivid smudges John Watson’s existence dyed in, and the unpleasant reminder that bloodstains never completely wash out.

**

Mrs Hudson looks at him with sad eyes when he leaves the flat on the way to St Bart’s and he cannot bring himself to tell her to shove off. He pretends he does not see and comes back so late that she is already asleep.

**

He cleans the flat, when he has no cases, when the ringing silence becomes the hunter and he the hunted. He cleans, impulsive marionette on diamond wire, until there is nothing left on the floor and all of John’s books are locked away inside the second bedroom.  
  
He thought it’d satisfy him, having all the reminders out of the way, until he realizes how empty the flat has become.

**

Long ago, he’d wanted to ask what they were, but hadn’t: thought the answer might destroy him while he still harboured the hope that people have when they say ‘ _somehow’_.  
  
Now, he wishes he still had the luxury.

**

Molly doesn’t say a word, merely passes him her new mobile number and goes back to staring at her microscope.  
  
“What’s this for?”  
  
“In case, if you want it. A friend, I mean. Because, well. If you need it.”  
  
He knows what she is alluding to; that without John by his side, the great Sherlock Holmes is on his own. That he is a _y_ coordinate without an _x_ : lost. He twists her pity into a violet-lipped sneer, lifting his chin so she cannot see his tired eyes and gaunt cheeks. (He keeps forgetting to buy food and sleeps only when he crashes.)  
  
“I don’t.”  
  
She smiles, tight-lipped, and nods. “I didn’t think so.”

**

The _Turritopsis nutricula_ jellyfish will never have to dwindle, faded and withered, because it is immortal while petty human lives (and the things within them) are not.

**

He hears of the wedding through a copy of the weekly paper from John’s hometown, delivered pointedly to his doorstep by way of sleek black limo. He burns it slowly, caressing the inky folds with the poker, and applies a fifth patch to his forearm.

**

> _I’m fairly certain I haven’t authorized a database investigation on a ‘Mrs Mary Morstan-Watson’. –MH_

> _Mind your own business. –SH_

> _I am. –MH_

**

He keeps a cabinet of portfolio clippings, compiles folders and folders of information on her. Traces her family tree, her school record, her childhood. Her past flings, her frequent haunts. He writes down her flaws and all the ways she is not him, and when he is done, he locks her away with John’s cane.

**

He loses a stone and a half within a month, and cannot bring himself to care.

**

Sherlock sees him by the theatre downtown, whilst running about on his next case. He is dressed in a dark suit and jacket, head turned in Sherlock’s direction, and Sherlock mentally snaps the cane he’s leaning on because he knows he _doesn’t need it._  
  
The thrill of having John’s attention shoots straight through, slicing easily between his ribs to the base of his spine, nonchalantly spearing his heart along the way, and he shatters when he realizes John is not looking at him, but at the shop behind him.

**

Sometimes Sherlock spots him at Tesco buying milk, and needs to remind himself that he has to get his own jug. That the heavy shopping basket John is carrying isn’t for him, and that it isn’t his card John is holding.

**

In all pasts and presents and futures and other lives: Sherlock loves John, even when John does not love him back.

**

The jellyfish has no heart of its own. Only a barren cavity of cartilage and bundles of scattered nerves. It senses that things are there, and then not: simple. This, combined with its lack of a brain, means that it doesn’t feel pain.  
  
Yet humans do; humans feel it so overwhelmingly that it cripples even when it isn’t physical. Because humans do and continue to feel it, pain must have some evolutionary advantage that has allowed them to retain it through hundreds and thousands of years against nature and its odds. It must be good for something, perhaps reflex and reaction to slay enemies, to activate adrenaline and pounce upon prey. To awaken and hasten before all is lost. To _act_.  
  
And yet.

**Author's Note:**

> 'sehnsucht' (German) is, in part, an inconsolable and profound yearning that reaches to the bottom of a person's very being. It declares that an imperfect reality can never compare to the phantom completeness for which is searched. 
> 
> [[x](http://www.ejpd.admin.ch/content/ejpd/en/home/dokumentation/red/archiv/reden_christoph_blocher/2006/2006-07-10.html)] and [Wikipedia:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sehnsucht) the individual's search for happiness while coping with the reality of unattainable wishes.


End file.
